


Wrench and Swango

by Magical_Destiny



Category: Fargo (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Prompt Fill, The Adventures of Nikki and Wrench, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-12-14 18:02:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11788506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magical_Destiny/pseuds/Magical_Destiny
Summary: Wrench/Nikki oneshots written for prompts on Tumblr. Mostly scenes exploring the missing time between episodes 8 and 9.





	1. cheap

**Author's Note:**

> All prompts came from [this list.](http://magicaldestiny.tumblr.com/post/163887853325/send-me-a-number-and-ill-write-a-micro-story) This first ficlet was written for [mrstater.](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mrstater/pseuds/mrstater) <3

The Chinese restaurant had _golden_ in its name, but it looked anything but. Nikki scowled at the menu. Wrench looked placid beside her, but the small crowd waiting for takeout still gave him a wide berth. He had that effect on people.

She had a few choice words to say about food and expense, but she couldn’t sign many swear words yet and she’d left their notepad in the car. Wrench picked up on her body language and sent her an inquiring look.

She pinched her fingertips together and tapped them against her opposite palm, flinging them outward as though throwing money away. _Expensive._ She’d had to learn signs about money real quick. The way of the world, she supposed.

Wrench looked like he was trying not to smile. She couldn’t figure why. They had plans that would leave them financially well-endowed, but that’s all they were for now: plans. Their current collective pockets were pretty light.

He flattened both hands and swept his fingers across his palm. _Cheap._ He pointed at her as though she might somehow have missed his meaning. “Well I didn’t think you meant the food,” she muttered when he looked away.

He pointed at a picture on the menu above. Shrimp lo mein, thirteen dollars. More with tax. She didn’t bother to sign; the look she gave him communicated well enough, she thought.

Wrench started signing. _Eat_ , she recognized, and _drink_. She suspected the last part was _and be merry,_ but she wasn’t sure. He’d left out the bit about, “for tomorrow we die.” It was a dire sentiment with its full context, but the smile he flashed was anything but. Nikki was almost charmed. But she was nothing if not resolute.

“I’m not payin’ thirteen dollars for lo mein.”

She didn’t understand what he signed next. He had a tendency to go too fast, especially when he felt strongly about something. She shook her head, waited for him to try again. He huffed a sigh and drew a circle in the air. Bisected it with a slash of one hand and mimed pulling it apart.

“Split it?” Nikki asked, enunciating carefully so he could read her lips. He nodded. Gestured her forward to the cashier and pulled out his wallet. _You order, I pay._

She ordered the thirteen dollar plate of shrimp lo mein. And a soda. Go big or go home, as they said. When you had no home left, it narrowed the options considerably.

Wrench read the total on the register display screen and reached into his wallet. Nikki held up a few dollars; he shook his head vigorously. _I thought I explained—?_ his expression said.

“You did explain,” she answered. “But we split everything these days.”

He paused at that, long enough that she reached into his wallet herself to retrieve the remaining half of their bill when the cashier cleared her throat. She took the receipt and walked to the chairs designated for customers waiting on takeout orders. She passed the first open seats, opting for the only two empty chairs that were together.

She started tabulating how much further they could stretch their funds before they’d have to resort to petty theft to feed themselves. The edges of the receipt crumpled as she worried them under her fingertips. Wrench laid a hand over one of hers. Once she’d stilled, he pulled her hand closer, turning it palm up. He started tracing something across her palm. Letters, she realized.

_WORTH IT_

He let her hand go, but held her gaze. They really needed to carry a pen at all times, she decided. At least until she’d gotten better with signs. In the meantime, she reached for his hand and turned it palm up.

_GUESS WE‘LL SEE_


	2. this was a mistake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This prompt fill was written for [bratanimus.](http://archiveofourown.org/users/bratanimus) <3

The storage facility has been long abandoned and left to rot. The walls and ceiling are damp with mold and decay, but the elevators are functional. And, curiously, the security cameras. The lights work too, a few shorts and flickers excepted. Wrench wonders who pays the bills and watches the footage. Wonders if anyone does.

He rolls his shoulders and cracks his knuckles to loosen the stiffness after a few solid minutes of absorbing his rifle’s recoil. Only one guy had escaped. _The_ guy, as it turned out. Fate, as always, was a bitch. Especially when it came to who caught a bullet. But he and Nikki have the money now, and that’s something. Eating without counting the bills left in your pocket is always a plus. And maybe now they can properly disappear. After they drop Emmit Stussy, of course.

Wrench figures he’ll be an easy hit, practically speaking. It doesn’t take much to separate a man from his life when the life he’s led has been a soft one. Most soft people are so shocked by violence that they don’t even think to fight back. Grady would’ve taken one look at Emmit Stussy and laughed. Men like Emmit were cowards and fools—but murderers all the same. The conditions weren’t mutually exclusive. Wrench wouldn’t lose a moment’s sleep over disposing of him.

Easy target or not, they’ll need to plan for the hit now that the Varga job is over and done. It’s strange that Nikki, the queen of numbers and strategy, hasn’t already started planning for it.

He knows the moment she drops the bag of cash in front of him that she _has_ been planning. Just not with him. The sting of that is surprisingly sharp.

_All I want is the brother_ , she says with her hands. She learned to sign so she could speak to him. She could’ve written everything down, but she said she wanted to really communicate.

_I want to look in your eyes when I talk to ya._

Now her eyes are saying a lot. Mostly _I’m going this alone from here_ and _I’m sorry._

The apology is unnecessary, which is probably why she leaves it unsaid. In any case, he understands. He’d been in her shoes once, determined to put Lorne Malvo in the ground after Grady had died. Someone else got there first.

Screwed again by Fate and bullets.

Nikki doesn’t take enough of the money from the bag before she puts a hand on his shoulder instead of signing goodbye. He doesn’t know how to stop her. It’s too late now anyway; she’s out the door and he can’t call after her. Couldn’t hear her footsteps to follow her even if he ran out in pursuit. And what would he say? _Let me help you?_

Help is a lot like love: it means nothing if it’s unwanted and unrequited. And some things no one can help in the first place.

Wes stands stock still in the dead husk of a storage facility and blinks. Remembers letting Grady get them both an illegal gig instead of the reputable kind. Sticking with him though a hundred dirty jobs and separating the one time it turned out to be a mistake. Getting to his murderer too late to make him suffer for what he’d destroyed. Getting caught for petty crimes and ending up on a bus next to a woman with killers on her trail. Helping the woman past the point of absolute need. Letting her walk away on her own at the end of it.

He wonders which choices would have altered the outcomes if he’d tweaked them a little. Like getting a boring job somewhere with Grady, with bad pay and life insurance. Nikki would still be where she is, though. Or maybe there were other choices for her too. The web of their choices is too tightly tangled for him to make heads or tails of it. He doesn’t know how God manages omniscience. Maybe He doesn’t.

The money’s still waiting for him. Wrench zips the bag shut and slings it over his shoulder. It isn’t much different outside the facility than in—just a little colder and slightly more damp. Nikki left him the car. He climbs in and finds the key in the ignition. There’s a square of paper on the dash.

_I can’t sign words I don’t know in the first place. So I’ll just say thank you._

She didn’t sign her name. They never left identifying marks. In this sort of life, you couldn’t.

This was a mistake, he thinks, and isn’t sure if he means helping Nikki or letting her go.


	3. trembling hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This prompt fill was written for [annablisshoa.](http://annablisshoa.tumblr.com) <3

Nikki finds a guy who can tell them when Varga has a big operation in the works. It takes a few months of watching and planning, but she’s good with that sort of thing. She’s not sure Wrench really believed she could achieve her goals when she first wrote him a note detailing her intentions. Maybe she’d tried a little too hard, looking back. ( _I know what I’m doing,_ she’d written. _I played bridge. Semi-professionally._ ) He came around, though. And she was damn pleased at the look of surprise on his face when she walked him through the first stage of her plan. Even more pleased at the fact that he didn’t seem _that_ surprised. He hadn’t known she could do it, but he’d suspected. The only other person who’d ever suspected Nikki of competence was Ray. 

Wrench takes the lead on their game plan for ambushing the guy and Nikki lets him. He never does say much about his past, but Nikki’s gleaned that he was some kind of professional in a very particular sort of world. She’d watched him kill the men coming after her. Nobody got that good at anything without practice.

They set themselves up outside a bar their guy likes to hang around. Park the car with the license plate out of security camera range and under a busted street light to boot. Wrench has the guns wrapped in a blanket and shoved under the backseat; he unpacks just two and leaves the rest in easy reach. They double check the safeties and magazines in silence.

It goes off without a hitch, at first. Their guy stumbles out about the same time he usually does and about as drunk as he usually is. They step out of the car, guns held against their thighs to keep them out of sight, and start walking.

“Hey, buddy,” Nikki calls. “I got a question.”

He whirls around, hand on his pocket. They’ve never been sure whether he carries a gun on his off hours, but Wrench has already pulled his. The guy squints to focus his bleary vision and then his eyes blow wide.

“Whoa, whoa,” he says, lifting his hands with very little coordination. “I got nothing, man. Leave me be, huh?”

“You do have something,” says Nikki. “Something I need. You gonna play nice and tell me about Varga’s operation?”

With the benefit of hindsight, Nikki will think that the terror in his eyes should’ve set off a few more warning bells. It’s possible to have your eyes _too_ focused on the prize, she’ll suppose. Too much of a good thing and all that.

Wrench steps forward to grab him and shove him against the wall, but the adrenaline in his blood must’ve outweighed the alcohol just long enough to give him a burst of speed. He shoots forward, darting between the two of them, flailing a desperate blow that lands hard on Nikki’s sternum. Getting the breath knocked out of you, they call it. It’s not an extreme enough description for the phenomenon, in Nikki’s view.

The pain of it is nothing compared to the wave of blind panic that comes with struggling for air and not getting any. She’s on her knees and doesn’t remember falling. She hears Wrench catch up to the guy. Two pairs of pounding footfalls turn into one after the mushy _smack_ of an ugly punch. He won’t be going anywhere soon. She feels a grim sort of satisfaction about that when her lungs open and there’s room in her brain for the feeling.

Wrench is back beside her. His hand on her back rises and falls with her straining lungs. He’s scanning her for injuries when she finally looks at him.

_OK_ , he signs. His expression makes it a question. He does it again.

The sign is just the letters. She probably would’ve recognized them even if they hadn’t recently been drilling the alphabet at her request. Especially when he’s signing slow and careful to be sure she understands.

She pulls in a few more breaths to steady herself. When she finally signs it back, her hands are shaking. He waits. She does it again, with barely a tremble. He nods at last and waits beside her as she stands up. She appreciates that he doesn’t hold out a hand to help her.

Their guy is waiting face down a few feet away. “He waited,” says Nikki, facing Wrench so he can read her lips. “Nice of him.” Wrench’s smile is dark.

He slows his gait to walk beside her when she starts moving, but he doesn’t reach for her arm or try to help. She appreciates not being shepherded along. The thing about sheep is they’re vulnerable and stupid. Nikki has no intention of being either of those things ever again. She doesn’t need a shepherd. A partner, though—that she’ll take any day.

Wrench cocks his pistol. Nikki listens to the soon-to-be informant’s first groans and waits for him to wake up. When she puts her hands on her hips, they’re steady.


End file.
